The International Tomato Genome Sequencing Project was begun in 2004
by an international consortium including participants from Korea,
China, the United Kingdom, India, the Netherlands, France, Japan,
Spain, Italy and the United States. The initial approach was to
sequence only the euchromatic sequence using a BAC-by-BAC approach,
and in total more than 1,200 BACs have been sequenced. In 2009, a
complementary whole-genome shotgun approach was initiated, which in
conjunction with other data yielded high quality assemblies. The
International Tomato Annotation Group (ITAG) annotates the genome
builds generated by this combined sequencing approach.